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say it: LIT-uhl
little is an adjective, noun and adverb meaning "limited or below average in number or quantity or magnitude or extent". It is pronounced /ˈlɪtəl/ — LIT-uhl. It carries 10 recorded senses.
(quantifier used with mass nouns) small in quantity or degree; not much or almost none or (with `a') at least some
“little rain fell in May”
“gave it little thought”
“little time is left”
“we still have little money”
“a little hope remained”
“there's slight chance that it will work”
“there's a slight chance it will work”
(informal) small and of little importance
“a fiddling sum of money”
“a footling gesture”
“our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war”
“a little (or small) matter”
“a dispute over niggling details”
“limited to petty enterprises”
“piffling efforts”
“giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction”
colloquialism
low in stature; not tall
“he was short and stocky”
“short in stature”
“a short smokestack”
“a little man”
small in a way that arouses feelings (of tenderness or its opposite depending on the context)
“a nice little job”
“bless your little heart”
“my dear little mother”
“a sweet little deal”
“I'm tired of your petty little schemes”
“filthy little tricks”
“what a nasty little situation”
not much
“he talked little about his family”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for little come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.